


Substitute Lover

by GoddessOfGanon



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Julian's Route, Spoilers for The Chariot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 12:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12557256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessOfGanon/pseuds/GoddessOfGanon
Summary: "Can you make me forget him? I don't wish to remember."





	Substitute Lover

**Author's Note:**

> My reaction to Asra being there for the Apprentice (Solia, in this fic) after the break up with Julian. It was a sad time.

_"Julian left me."_

The words fall from her lips without thought. They'd been dangling there since he'd kissed her goodbye and left her on the step, mouth agape, arms limp at her sides, inept to catch them, the words or the tears that now splatter onto the floorboards at Asra's feet.

The magician's eyes widen, then narrow in an arc of confusion as he processes the implications of her statement. Each words seems to have its own weight and bearing, leveled now in the slinking shadows of dusk that the multitude of flickering candles around the shop are battling to keep at bay. The light doesn't seem to touch his apprentice, however. Solia stands in the same darkness as since she'd walked in. Even as he entreats her towards him and hands her a mug of tea, the shadows don't leave her eyes. He recognizes that darkness. It's loneliness. 

 _Julian._ A name he hasn't heard in some while. Not directly, anyhow. The doctor's presences lingers over the town still, with a dull rot, much like the Count he was accused of assassinating. There had been times that Julian had seemed to enjoy this, Asra recalls, this stepping into his own shadow, though he never overstayed his welcome as a ghost.  

 _Left._ Which implies they had been together in the first place, in more ways than one, he'd wager. Asra's heart seems to be wringing itself by the time he's arrived at the conclusion.

 _Me._ Julian had left _her._ His apprentice. Solia.  _Asra's_ Solia. He had left her.

Asra opens his mouth, closes it. Gestures for her to sit at one of the counter stools opposite him. "Do you want to talk about it?" He asks softly. Strands of flaxen hair hang about her face and he longs to brush them away, drag his knuckle down her cheek. He ends up sitting on his hands to keep himself from doing just that, directing his attention to the tale streaming from her lips like a burst faucet. She tells him the full story, which surprises him. Which shatters him. 

She's drained her tea. Drawing himself from his seat, Asra reaches across the counter to take her mug to refill, when she grabs his forearm, her eyes signaling alarms as her gaze flickers over his face, taking in every freckle as though the magician in front of her may be an impostor. He's about to say something, though she beats him to the punch.

"Can you make me forget him? I don't wish to remember."

Asra winces. Her words stake him, a sharp twist of a burning spire that's angled upwards, at his heart.

"I-I can't, not again-"

He's silenced by her lips, or is it her hands? Clapped over either side of his face in the same moment her mouth reaches his. She's soft, though she's trying not to be. Asra can't stop himself from falling into her. Insistent pouts of breath and shifts of her chin, as though she's trying to push past him, as though she's looking for someone beyond him.  _Julian._ What she finds there, will it be enough?

She pulls away as quickly as she pulled him close. "You love me, don't you? You never wanted to leave me, did you?"

Asra swallows thickly, the rise of emotion prickling up his throat, pressing against his eyelids. "It pained me to go, every time." He's breaking down, he can hear it in the jaggedness of his words, the uneven slope of chest drawing in unsteady breaths. 

"Then hold me." She whispers fiercely. She hasn't let go of his cheeks. "And make me forget." Her voice is pleading as she draws him onto the floor, her hair fanning out like some Renaissance queen over the rugs that overlap the floorboards, heaps of plush and color that add a dizzying tilt to angle of their embrace. And he can't keep himself from kissing her back, kissing her in the way he's always wanted to, lips moving in a perfect tandem. His hands are flattened against her back, chaste enough. She curls into him though, shifting his hands to her hips and connecting them at angles they previously hadn't been, causing him to gasp, breaking away from her before hastening to seal himself against her once more.

Her lips are raw, and Asra swears he can taste  _him_ there. The dark, smoky flavor that lingered over Asra back when they both had been working at the palace. His clothes smelled like nighttime, even in the light of day. His mouth was shaped to words he never spoke, which tinged the way he would taste. Solia would know that better than he, now. 

 _You don't want this. You don't want me._ The words are on his tongue, they're there as she kisses him, pushes her tongue against his in the same searching way of hers. He wonders if she can taste what's unspoken between them. He wonders if that would change the way she's holding him, in the way he's only dreamt of. Only able to imagine the day he'd confess his true feelings, and, in the loftiest of his daydreams, she'd return in full reciprocity. Then they would kiss, like stars consuming their atmosphere, eroding into a supernova that whites out the moment entirely, all of it aside from their embrace. Then he'd push her onto her bed, or maybe she'd drag him onto his, and his hands would peel away their separating layers, unfolding her to him and folding himself back inside. All the while she'd be saying his name in a soft drawl of a whisper, his name,  _Asra._

When he manages to drag himself away from her the second time, he sees her lips are pushed tightly together, sealing in a name that isn't his.

"Solia, look at me." Asra takes her chin in his hand, drawing her gaze to his own. Her eyes are glazed over, he must be a blur to her. Has she reshaped him into Julian already? If he asks her to say his name, what would the twice or thrice the syllables that break from her cracked lips sound like? He wonders this, ghosting his fingers over her cheek. "I need you to tell me you want this."  _Me._ Tell me you want  _me._

"I want this." She replies needily, fingers scrunching in the rumpled fabric of his tunic, knuckles lying flat over the rapid pulse of his heartbeat. She knows he wants her. Maybe she's always known, and maybe that's what makes it so easy for her to tell him what she wants is much the same. 

 _"Please,"_ She whines, winding her fingers into his hair, tugging at the wind of wintry curls there. Asra sighs, the heated draft fanning across her temple. He's sinking further into her. Her eyes flutter close.

"Of course, my dear."


End file.
